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10 Steps to Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing

LinkedIn continues to grow in both membership and website traffic. When I wrote my first LinkedIn book back in early 2009, LI was at 40 million users and had not yet established itself as the default social networking platform for professionals that it has become. Beyond mere networking, however, in 2011 there is now a compelling case to be made for us to rethink how we view LinkedIn not as a job seeker’s paradise, but as the place to do B2B social business. It is with that thought in mind, bringing my own nearly two decades of successful B2B sales and marketing experience into play, that I decided and am happy to announce the publication of my 2nd book Maximizing LinkedIn for Sales and Social Media Marketing.

To be honest with you, some of you might remember my top social media books blog post several months ago where I said, “…be forewarned that my Twitter book is next in line.” It was in late March of this year, with the manuscripts of both that Twitter book as well as this new book more than half done, that I made the decision to finish this new book first. The IPO, the continued belief that there were too many common LinkedIn fallacies that needed to be addressed, and the need for more literature on B2B social media marketing made me feel that it would provide more value to my readers to release this one first.

The new book goes into practical details, enhanced with more than 15 case studies of others who have accomplished what I say is possible, on the plethora of ways that exist in which both businesses as well as professionals can maximize LinkedIn to generate new leads, foster brand loyalty, increase targeted website traffic, and close deals. As a sneak preview, I wanted to summarize some points of my book in a 10-step approach to give you some ideas to help you maximize the professional social networking platform for the sales and marketing efforts of your own business. Each point represents a preview of one of the chapters to give you a feel for the content and scope of what I cover in the book.

LI requires a certain mindset in order to be successful on it. Just as there are some who go to business networking events who come back thinking it was a waste of time, there are others who come back with leads or relationships that when cultivated will lead to business. As one of those who I interviewed for the book suggested, “LinkedIn is only valuable if you decide to be an active member.”

Still don’t think your business needs to be on LinkedIn? Many companies are missing out on potential business by paying too much attention to other social media platforms and not taking advantage of the tools that LinkedIn allows companies, and professionals, to utilize to promote themselves and their businesses. If you’re a B2B company, make no doubt about the fact that most decision makers you want to target are already on LinkedIn, and they can potentially be far more approachable than on a personal networking platform such as Facebook. Even B2C companies, like the Irish Dog Bloody Mary Mix case study in the book, show that B2C companies have B2B relationships (distributors, marketing partners, et. al.) that can be cultivated on LinkedIn to develop new business. In the case of the bloody mary mix company, they are now generating 25% of their business from LinkedIn!

Just as you need a website to promote your company on the Internet, your employees need an optimized LI profile to best represent their company and products and services. LinkedIn is a database of professionals that is often used to find other professionals and businesses. If Facebook were the White Pages, LinkedIn is the Yellow Pages. Because of this, professionals and companies need to be found just like they need to be sure they are classified correctly and displayed prominently in the phone book. Creating a sales-oriented profile starts by understanding where your customer is and what they might be looking for and adjusting your profile appropriately. In other words, your profile is not about you – it is a sales tool to help your potential customers find you.

Because it’s 2011 and LinkedIn has grown by 60% in the last year alone, it’s time to re-establish your online network. Every connection added gives you that much additional reach to find and be found. It’s also time to rethink your connections policy and begin to strategically target new connections who might be able to help you and your sales and marketing objectives.

Every business needs to understand the importance of establishing and optimizing their presence on LinkedIn Companies. Having a presence on Companies is not just about putting your company in the LI database just as professionals do with their profiles. It is about recognizing that recommendations from your products and services within your Companies page can play a vital role in generating business similar to how personal recommendations give instant credibility to professional profiles.

Why do so many companies have Facebook Pages but never think about creating their own LinkedIn Group? Not only do Groups have far more moderating features than Facebook Pages have, but they allow you to create a community of potential customers or present users in the most lucrative demographic of any social media website.

Many professionals create their profiles and then wait for something to happen. Similar to the business networking event analogy, just showing up will get you nowhere. It’s about engaging on LinkedIn, and there are many public forums and applications which, with a little out-of-the-box thinking, give you the opportunity to engage with other professionals in a business atmosphere for business objectives.

The professional networking website is quickly becoming a source of business intelligence for the sales and marketing professional. Since social media monitoring tools do not cover LI yet, you will have to manually look through various public forums and applications for information, but there is a great deal of intelligence to be gleaned that can lead to new business for the effort.

Social media optimization is about using social media activity to bring more visitors to your website. For many websites like TechCrunch or even this site, LinkedIn provides the 2nd largest source of website traffic from social media websites. From my experience, traffic from LI also provides the lowest bounce rate as well as highest number of page views per visit. There are many ways to use LI to drive traffic back to your website, but if you’re not getting enough traffic from LinkedIn to your website, you’re missing out on potentially high quality and lucrative visitors.

Which is the only social advertising platform which lets you target by company and title? LinkedIn Ads aren’t cheap, but LI is a quality over quantity platform that is appropriate for targeting decision makers for your B2B or expensive B2C product.

As you can see, there are a variety of ways in which LinkedIn can be used to help your company or yourself from a sales and marketing perspective. I hope you enjoyed the above tips and I further hope that this new book helps revolutionize the way that businesses look at LI similarly to how my 1st has helped thousands of professionals to gain insight on how to navigate and benefit from a robust and social presence on the professional networking platform.

Neal Schaffer is a leading authority on helping businesses through their digital transformation of sales and marketing through consulting, training, and helping enterprises large and small develop and execute on social media marketing strategy, influencer marketing, and social selling initiatives. President of the social media agency PDCA Social, Neal also teaches digital media to executives at Rutgers University, the Irish Management Institute (Ireland), and the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland). Fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, Neal is a popular keynote speaker and has been invited to speak about digital media on four continents in a dozen countries. He is also the author of 3 books on social media, including Maximize Your Social (Wiley), and in late 2019 will publish his 4th book, The Business of Influence (HarperCollins), on educating the market on the why and how every business should leverage the potential of influencer marketing. Neal resides in Irvine, California but also frequently travels to Japan.

About Neal Schaffer

Neal Schaffer is a leading authority on helping businesses through their digital transformation of sales and marketing through consulting, training, and helping enterprises large and small develop and execute on social media marketing strategy, influencer marketing, and social selling initiatives. President of the social media agency PDCA Social, Neal also teaches digital media to executives at Rutgers University, the Irish Management Institute (Ireland), and the University of Jyvaskyla (Finland). Fluent in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, Neal is a popular keynote speaker and has been invited to speak about digital media on four continents in a dozen countries. He is also the author of 3 books on social media, including Maximize Your Social (Wiley), and in late 2019 will publish his 4th book, The Business of Influence (HarperCollins), on educating the market on the why and how every business should leverage the potential of influencer marketing. Neal resides in Irvine, California but also frequently travels to Japan.

NeAl, I was going to point the same thing out to you, but didn’t want to appear to be a-hole on my 1st comment to your useful site, hence the “A” ;-) As a matter of fact, I have a partner who is getting ready to ink a deal w/ a R.E. shop who uses LI quite a bit (albeit) not too effectively that I may have circle back to broker a potential gig for you to ponder? – NeiL

I haven’t taken LinkedIn for a ride yet. I did navigate through the site about the time they went public though. But most of the pages were locked because I couldn’t really get inside the site. But it looked like it was going to cost money for me to even be a member. Is this true? And what are your thoughts about SalesSpider? I am a member of that one and new as well.

Nope, you can enjoy 99% of the benefits of LinkedIn from being a free member. Don’t know what information you were digging around for. As for SalesSpider, never heard of it – but I suppose it comes down to your objective.

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ABOUT NEAL

Neal Schaffer is a leader in helping educate executives and professionals on social media as well as in implementing successful social media strategies for businesses. CEO of the social media agency PDCA Social, social media educator at Rutgers University and the Irish Management Institute, social media keynote speaker who has spoken at hundreds of events on four continents, and author of three social media books, Neal is a true innovator and influencer in the growing world of social media for business.